Angel (10 page)

Jade’s fingernails were bitten almost all the way to the quick. I suppressed a cringe at the tender exposed skin, knowing how painful that could be. It was a habit I’d picked up as a kid. One I’d thankfully broken. Her slender fingers traced over each individual image, studying them, committing them to memory. I was happy to share them with her, but it saddened me to know that she had few—if any—happy memories of her own. Had she ever gone rock climbing? Horseback riding? Had she ever seen the ocean? Did she have a single photo where she stood side-by-side with her family and smiled? Somehow, I doubted it.

Before she reached the final shot, Kiernan snatched the album from her grasp and slid it closer to himself. I took a second peek at the page, curious about what it was that caught his attention. It wasn’t a particularly interesting set
of photos. One of the two of us body surfing off the coast of Mexico, a couple pretty landscapes that Mom must have liked, and a family shot. Mom and Dad—arms around each other—Kiernan and me in front. Happy, smiling faces. A family with no clue that their entire world was about to be blown apart.

Kiernan skimmed the tip of his finger along the outline of the photo, but I doubted he was really seeing it. His gaze had turned inward, eyes glassy. A cold lump solidified in the pit of my stomach. I’d seen that look before.

“Where’s my mom?” He looked to Jade for an answer and she startled slightly beside him.

And
why shouldn’t she? It appeared this particularly
fun
side of Kiernan’s condition was all new to her. “With . . . my mom?”

“Oh.” Kiernan’s gaze dropped back to the picture and his thumb stroked over Dad’s smiling face. This wasn’t going to end well. “And my dad? Where’s he? Still at work?”

Shit.
Jade looked completely lost. So did Kiernan. I was the only one in the room who had any freaking clue what the hell was going on. And I wished I didn’t.

“Would you excuse us for a minute, Jade? I need to speak with my brother.” I tried to act normal. Like the awkward level hadn’t just hit the roof.

Jade wasn’t the type of girl who couldn’t take a hint. She cleared out quick and quiet, with only a passing glance in my direction that let me know exactly how freaked out she really was. Kiernan sat watching her go and I wondered if he even knew who she was. Tumors did funny things to memories, mixed them up, erased them, muddled them. I couldn’t imagine how frustrating that must have been at times.

“Kiernan?”

“Where’s Dad?” There was a bite to his words. Being confused was one thing, but he
knew
he was confused. He
knew
there was something he should remember. He just couldn’t. And it pissed him off.

“He’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation. It wasn’t even the second. But it never hurt any less. “He left, Kier. After you
r diagnosis. He packed his shit and bailed. Before we moved back here. Remember?”

Probably not the gentlest way to break it to him, but the doctors said that the more detail I provided, the easier it would be for him to latch onto the memory.

“He . . . left us?” Kiernan’s brow scrunched and I watched his eyes flick side to side, searching his brain for the elusive knowledge.

It was bad enough that he had to go through this once in his life, but each time he forgot it was like losing Dad all over again for him. It sucked in a big, big way. Mom couldn’t bring herself to talk about him—and I didn’t want her to have to—so I got to play the bearer of bad news again and again.

Slowly understanding dawned on him. “Yeah. Right. I knew that.”

“Of course you did.”

“I just . . . I forgot. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.” A slap on his shoulder drew him out of whatever residual memories lurked fresh and raw in his mind.

“Where’s Jade?”

“She’s in the kitchen.”

“She saw . . .?” And there it was. The humiliation I’d been trying to avoid by sending her away. He was mortified.

“Kiernan, it’s no big deal. You get a little confused sometimes, so what? It’s not like it’s your fault. She understands that. I’ll explain it to her.” He couldn’t even bring himself to look at
me.
How was he going to face her? “It’s
Jade
we’re talking about, Kier. You really think she’d think any less of you because of this? What you two have . . . it’s something special.
She’s
something special. Don’t let your pride get in the way of that.”

It was easy to make statements like that being on the outside, looking in. Kiernan was a guy and guys have a thing about weakness. They have a special hatred for looking weak in front of their girl. Kiernan wasn’t weak. He was the strongest person I knew. But he didn’t see it that way. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t even hearing me. Too lost in his own shame to listen to what I was saying.

“
Kiernan!
” His startled gaze flicked up to meet mine and I held it steady. “Do not let that damn tumor take any more from you than it already has. Let it go. Do you understand me?”

Embarrassment morphed into confusion, followed quickly by acceptance, and with it returned a bit of that fire I liked to see in his eyes. The fire that said he still had some fight left in him. And he planned to use every last ounce of it.

“You’re right. Screw the tumor. I won’t let it win. Not against her.”

“Good.” That’s what I liked to hear.
Not today, bastard. You don’t get to win today.
“I’m going to go find Jade. I’ll be right back.”

She was pacing like a caged lioness back and forth across the darkened kitchen. The sun was beginning to set outside and she hadn’t even bothered to turn on a light, too lost in her own world of worry and fear to notice. A world she knew well. One she seemed to spend a majority of her time in. One I wished I could reach into and rescue her from. Except, where would I take her? I lived in that world, too.

Her pale skin glowed against the darker backdrop of her hair, fingers tangling in the long locks only to break free and tangle once more. The moment I stepped into the room, the lioness pounced.

“Is he okay? Is there something wrong with—?”

“He’s fine.” Wide, anxious eyes stared back at me, desperate to believe what I was telling her. “It’s the tumor. Sometimes it puts a little extra pressure on his brain and makes him . . . confused.”

“How long does it last?”

“Depends. Usually not long. He’s fine now. Just embarrassed. He hates it when he forgets stuff like that. It’s why I asked you to leave the room. It wasn’t personal. He just . . . didn’t need an audience.”

“No. Of course not.” It was good to see her stop and take a breath. She was learning as she went. Tossed into the deep end
, without as much as a floaty. Scary things kept happening without warning, without explanation. The stress of that could be overwhelming at times. “That’s awful.”

“Yeah. It’s not particularly fun having to hear that your dad bailed on you when you needed him most over and over again, and feeling like it’s the first time, every time.” I don’t know what possessed me to lay that crap on her. She had a way about her that calmed me. Comforted me. Maybe I was getting
too
comfortable.

“It can’t be much fun having to be the one to break the news over and over again, either.”

I stopped breathing. A few words from her lips and it was like my lungs simply shut down and forgot how to function. Worse . . . I didn’t even care.

I lived behind a wall. Hell, I
was
the damn wall. And I painted it with smiling faces and strong steel beams. But beneath all the fancy artwork, the wall was made of cardboard. She saw that. This broken girl, this battered Angel, saw beyond all the pretty pictures and false façade to what lie underneath.

Me. She saw
me.

And that scared the crap out of me.

Fourteen

Sober.

Jade’s mom was getting sober.

From what I understood, that was a first for her. Practically a damn miracle.
But if the past year and a half had taught me anything, it was that miracles didn’t exist. God? Heaven? I held out hope—mainly for Kiernan’s sake—but I’d been disappointed too many times to have faith in miracles, anymore.

Maybe I was becoming a cynical mess. Maybe there was hope for her. For Jade. But I hated the idea of her suffering that kind of disappointment.

A loud buzz started up on my nightstand, followed by a single ear-piercing beep. I’d been lying in the same position for hours. The mattress, the pillow, all of it perfectly conformed to my body. I really didn’t want to mess that up, so I groped aimlessly until my fingers closed around the cold plastic of my phone. Beth’s name was scrawled across the top of the screen, followed by this message:

Hey. You awake?

What was the point of texting someone, setting off their phone—which was more than likely within arm’s reach no matter what time of night it was—and asking if they’re awake? If I wasn’t before, I would have been now. Luckily, for her, sleep wasn’t something I accomplished very easily. Or very often.

Yeah. What’s up?

Are you going swimming in the morning?

I was planning to.

Mind if I drop by?

Did I mind? I thought I would have. Swimming was
my
time. The time that I had to myself, away from the constant stress and drama of my life. But having someone to share it with somehow felt less imposing than I expected it would.

Sure. Why not?

Great :) I’ll see you at seven.

There’s nothing worse than feeling like you
’re blind in one eye after ten minutes of staring at your bright phone screen in your darkened room with your face smooshed into a pillow and one eye shut to stabilize your depth perception. Except, maybe, actually
being
blind in one eye. And being blind in
both
probably wasn’t great, either. And, yeah okay, there were a few things I could think of that were worse than that, too, but that’s beside the point. Squeezing my eyes shut, I waited for my right pupil to dilate again so I could actually see, and considered what I’d just gotten myself into.

***

Tiny fractured particles of light danced and played on the smooth surface above me. I was weightless, floating. My mind, finally quieted, focused on nothing but my next breath, which I refused to take for as long as possible. For almost a full minute-and-a-half at a time . . . I was free.

Splash.

The particles moved into a frenzy and my peace was ruptured. Cool morning air wrapped around my shoulders and I surrendered to the urge to draw some into my lungs. Shaking the sopping hair from my face, I scanned the pool just in time to see Beth breaking the surface.

“Morning.” She smiled and used her entire arm to swipe her long locks back over her shoulder. It floated around her in the water like threads of pure gold. The lights that I’d found so soothing abandoned me for her, dancing amongst the strands.

“Good morning.”

“The water’s nice.” Her arms were fanned out beside her, slowly sweeping back and forth across the rippling
surface. “What were you doing under there?”

“Breathing.”

“What?” Beth laughed as though it were a joke, which must have been how it sounded to her, and I shook it off.

“Nothing. Never mind.”
I paddled in place and what I
thought
was a brilliant idea at the time occurred to me. “You wanna race?”

A smile broke over Beth’s face. “Only if you’re ready to lose.”

“Oh-ho. Is that how it is?” I started backstroking toward the wall.

“That’s how it is.” She fell into a graceful butterfly stroke that I only knew the name of.

“Wait. Are you a swimmer?”

Her smile grew mischievous. “Captain of the varsity team in high school, baby.”

Well . . . Damn. I was screwed. Swimming was a hobby of mine. A workout, maybe. I could do it, but I certainly wasn’t going to be winning any awards.

“You ready? You look a little nervous? You can still back out if you don’t want to get beat by a girl.”

“No way. There’s a first time for everything, right?”

“On your mark.” She took hold of the wall with both hands, knees bent all the way to her stomach, feet planted against the side.

“Get set.” I tried to copy her pose, but it was easier said than done. My body did not bend that way.

Beth flashed me one last, victorious smile. “Go!”

She took off like a rocket. I swear the girl was halfway across the pool before my brain even processed the command.

My height and long arms gave me an advantage and made it
almost
a fair race. She still beat me. By several lengths.

By the time I caught up to her, she was sitting on the edge of the pool with h
er feet dangling in the water, a huge grin on her face. I grabbed the wall and heaved myself out beside her, trying to catch my breath. Beth was even breathing hard.

“Alright, I can admit defeat. Even to a girl.”

She laughed at my lame attempt at humor and glanced back out over the empty water. “You’re a good swimmer. It’s just your technique that could use some work.”

“I spent a lot of time in the ocean. Technique was saved for other things.” I realized how that sounded the m
inute it popped out of my mouth. Too late to do anything about it.

Luckily,
Beth didn’t seem to notice. “The ocean? Where are you from, Caulder? I don’t really know anything about you. I could be swimming with an axe murderer.”

There was a reason for that. The closer you got to people the more they wanted from you. And the more I wanted to give it to them. My plate was full, at the moment.

“Well, we’re in a pool, so if I was a murderer, there would be more efficient means than an axe.” Because that wasn’t a totally creepy thing to say. “Originally, I’m from California.”

Not exactly true. Technically, I was a local,
originally
. But after a decade, I liked to think of myself as a native Californian.

“California. Wow. So that’s how you got so good at swimming.”

Couldn’t exactly grow up on the coast and
not
know how to swim. “How about you?”

“Oh about a zillion hours in the pool at home.”

“You have a pool? Indoor?” Just a guess because I was pretty sure she was a local, too.

“Yup. It’s great. Huge. I practically spent my entire life in that thing.”

Our house was freaking ginormous. We had enough spare bedrooms to house a small army. And yet it lacked the one thing I’d probably get the most use out of. How the hell had that happened?

“But you don’t swim for the college?” Who goes from captain of the varsity team to swimming morning
races with me?

Beth shrugged. “It was fun while it lasted, but there isn’t enough time to train anymore. I got accepted on an academic scholarship. Actually, I got both, but the academic one looks better on a resume, so I dropped the swimming and focused on studies. I have to maintain a three-point-seven GPA for the scholarship, but I’d really like to graduate summa cum laude.”

“Wow.” I was impressed. And a little intimidated. “That’s . . . a lot.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, but it was a happy sigh. Beth was one of those people who thrived in chaos. Like me.

I wondered if things weren’t the way they were if I’d be like her. Setting unrealistic goals just to struggle to meet them. Probably.

“You know one thing about swimming that never changes, no matter where you do it?” Beth stretched her arms out behind her and arched back
ward to shake out her hair.

I
t wasn’t her hair that I was looking at, though. “Huh?”

“It always leaves me starving.” She stood and snagged a pale pink towel from beside my pile of stuff. “
Wanna grab some breakfast?”

Before I could open my mouth, my stomach decided to answer for me. The
growl was loud enough to echo off the tile walls. “Sure. I could go for a bite.”

“Great. I’m just going to change.” She slipped into the girl’s locker room.

Normally I didn’t bother changing until I got home and could hop in the shower, but if she felt the need before we went wherever she had in mind, I probably should, too.

***

My skin felt itchy and tight from the chlorine. It was driving me crazy, trying not to scratch like a dog with fleas in the passenger seat of Beth’s corvette. Not a classic, but its cherry red paint job and black ragtop still earned her a lot of envious stares. Some upbeat bubblegum pop station pumped through the speakers.

When we pulled up outside of a small restaurant and some ballad about the power of
love snapped off mid verse, I couldn’t have been happier. I didn’t even care where we were.

“Table for two?” We followed a short girl around our age, maybe slightly older, past rows of empty booths to a small table tucked out of the way. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Same for me.” Beth took a seat across from me. Not that she had much of a choice. The tiny table only had two chairs.

“So . . .” Scratching the skin off my arms beneath the table, I sat back and glanced around the restaurant. “Nice place.”

It seemed more like the type of place you’d go to for a fancy dinner. Low lighting, privacy walls between booths, unlit candles on every table alongside vases of some kind of small, white flowers. Their breakfast service didn’t seem to draw quite as much interest. Beth and I were alone aside from a few servers, wandering around, filling sugar bowls and laying out utensils.

“Yeah. My family comes here for celebrations sometimes. But they make killer banana pancakes that aren’t on the dinner menu.”

“Guess I know what I’m ordering.” I flashed her a grin and folded my menu. “So you live around here?”

“Yeah.” She named a town I knew to be about a forty minute commute from school. “You, too, right? I mean, you’re local, too?”

“Yeah. I live about a half hour from school. Only in the opposite direction.” I have no idea why I didn’t just tell her where I lived. It wasn’t a secret. There was nothing to be ashamed of. We lived in a nice town. Or, at least, a nice
part
of town.

My mind went to the ‘not so nice’ parts of town and my thoughts took an unwelcome turn.

“Have you decided what you’d like to eat?” The waitress was back, delivering a much needed mug of sustenance.

We both ordered the banana pancakes before I was able to indulge in my first sip. I could literally
feel
my brain cells coming to life. My dramatic sigh brought Beth to laughter again. She laughed a lot. I liked that. There wasn’t nearly enough laughter in my life.

“Fellow
coffeeaholic like me, huh?” She took a sip of hers and groaned. “They make the best coffee, too.”

“I have to admit it’s pretty good. And I’m a bit of a coffee snob. Not easily impressed.”

“Glad I picked a place that could live up to your high standards, then. Not like that cart sludge they serve on campus.”

“Definitely not.” I knew exactly what she was talking about. The coffee cart at school was fine in cases of emergency, but I definitely hadn’t visited it the handful of times I’d caved for the taste.

“Here you are.” Two plates of steaming pancakes slid onto the table between us and the chunks of real banana baked in set my mouth to watering. “Can I get you anything else?”

I turned down the offer of a refill and barely even noticed the waitress leaving. “This smells fantastic.”

“Told ya so. Wait ‘til you taste it.” Beth cut off a chunk and shut her eyes as she slipped it past her lips.

I caught myself staring. Not that I could be blamed, but still . . . Refocusing on the equally delectable food in front of me, I took a bite of my own.

“Damn.”

We lapsed into silence as we savored the sweet taste of bananas, walnuts, and maybe just a hint of vanilla? Whatever it was, it was incredible.

“So . . .” Beth straightened in her seat and twisted a finger in her hair. She was trying to look nervous, but she wasn’t. Not really. I knew what nervous looked like and she never once broke eye contact. Beth had a ton of confidence. That could be a really attractive feature in a girl, but there was only one reason I could think of that she’d be pretending not to. “There’s this concert Friday night at the theater downtown. I was wondering if maybe you’d—”

“Beth.”
Dammit.
I’d had a feeling this was headed somewhere last night, but held to the hope that I was overthinking things, letting my ego get in the way. Evidently, my ego was just fine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I’m just . . . “